Educate your children!

Pay off debt

Since the Internet is more or less anonymous I can be totally honest. Two years ago we bought a house for $160,000 and we made about 60k a year combined. At the time we had no debt, but buying a house IS buying debt so we need furniture and on and on. Last July (2003) I found misled too ill to work at all, 6,700 in debt and my husband took a pay cut! It was really bad. His regular job income (take home) was/is $21,900. We refinanced the mortgaeg from 1,00 a month to 958. While this added to our debt (we rolled in the closing costs) we HAD to get our monthly payment lowered. The biggest thing for me was MAKING THE COMMITMENT TO MYSELF TO CHANGE! That is the secret. I returned everything possible that I had bought over the past few months that weren’t essential. I sold my beloved harp (i hadn’t played it in a while and I owed money on it) I got rid of premium cable, I never ate out and on and on.

THE MONEY YOU SAVE IN THESE PLACE YOU MUST APPLY TO YOUR DEBT! Again, the real and only secret is I COMMITTED to doing it. So did my husband. Here is the unpleasant part. He took a second job and I sold stuff on Ebay. If you want to get out of debt faster, you’ve got to make more money. Not a job that is far from home (more gas) or that you need to dress up for, but a tempary job. Office or house cleaning is ideal. Next, to really rid myself of the debt, I followed an Accelerated Margin plan. This is where you pay one bill at a time. I will put the link at the bottom of the page,. The other thing that totally helped us and again, this might not work if you have bad credit, is we took out a loan. the interest was so much better then our credit cards and that really helped us pay everyhting faster. After the loan we only had about $700 left in debt and we would use any money we had, (extra jobs, NO buying coffee in the morning) and applied it to our debt. One of the most useful tips I have
is selling on ebay if possible.

It has made such a difference. When we get money through Paypal, we pay our bills for FREE (savings on stamps) through Paypal. So if I sold a $20.00 shirt I would take that money or even half of it and online, put it towards, say the sears card debt. Just chipping away at it a little extra at a time. Read books, the tightwad gazette, the dollar stretcher (on line) anything. But the real key is doing some serious soul searching and figure out WHY you spend. This is what has stopped me from going BACK into debt. That’s my mom, in debt,out of debt, in deb,t out of debt. I think it’s because she hasn’t faced why she spends. To me I feel I “earned” it. I work hard, I deserve nice things, I’ll pay it tomorrow. Those are my demons with money. I have too many tips for saving money, if you want to know anything specific or have a questions, please ask! Good luck!!!

I don’t mean to be rude, but how do you expect to pay off any debt or accumulate wealth if you don’t generate any income? Payday loan websites like whoneed500 won’t help you. You will have to pay the loan back within just a couple of weeks (read here how payday loans work). The lottery is just a tax on those who are really bad at math. Unless you have a rich aunt who loved you the best and is nearing her 100th B-day, you’d better start planning to make some money.

Your credit is already ruined. Start from there. Don’t worry about your creditors until you are generating enough income to put a roof over your head and food on the table. Unless you owe a single credit card a huge sum of money they won’t sue you. They calculate some losses on the books and for now, you are one of them. Truly, you need to concentrate on generating income and not worrying about your debt. Taking care of your grandmother is noble, but you either need some help or some reimbursement.

Love her like the Lord loves her but that doesn’t mean you can’t work a full time and job and still help care for her. Many of us worked WAY more than 8 hour days when we were young and dumb enough to do it 😉

Please know that I have way too many things on my plate to write this post only to bash you. I’m only typing these things in the hope that it makes you think. Quit being a victim of the debt you created and start taking back your life!